this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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We don't need more pronouns. We need less of them.
In my native language there is no even he/she pronouns. The word is “hän” and it’s gender neutral. You can be male, female, FTM, MTF, non-binary or what ever and you’re still called “hän”. You can identify as anything you like and "hän" already includes you.
No. I need to feel special.
/s
And we've nowadays taken it even further, in spoken Finnish we've even got rid of the "hän" and mostly use "se", which is the Finnish word for "it". The same pronoun is used for people in all forms, animals, items, institutions and so on, and in practice the only case for "hän" is people trying to remind others they consider their pets human.
Context will tell which one it is.
I feel the same but with genders. To be clear if anyone identifies to a specific gender, I'll respect that. However I don't see why genders are necessary. We are all unique human beings and there's no need to label everyone to a specific gender.
We should remove the gender information from ID and other documents unrelated to the gender
(Maybe kept the XX or XY mark on medical papers though, may be useful to avoid death from medical poisoning, but even your gender and sexual preferences have nothing to do here, so no gender mark neither)
I just like the thought of removing genders.
You are what you are and what you want to be.
The only difference is you over there have a vagina and you over there have a penis.
yeah I agree that's completely unnecessary apart from medical reasons
I'll go one further: I get (and respect) the utility of they/them pronouns for a singular entity, but it IS clunky and confusing. English is ever evolving but when I hear a "they" it is still very much more abstract and plural than a more specific he or she.
Whatever: it's my shit and I'll gladly deal with a nanosecond of confusion and adjust if it allows people to maintain their dignity. Point is, by insisting that there's nothing confusing about they/them in reference to a single entity feels disingenuous. I know moderate people who are otherwise live and let live as well as receptive to basic human dignity who are turned off by the confusing abstraction, switching tenses, etc.
They/them isn't the elegant, seamless drop in that people say it is and it hurts the messaging. I get that being rigid and forceful is necessary with the rampant transphobia and "i'm just asking (bad faith) questions" going on, but I still fuck up semantics and tenses like whoa
Thank you.
It’s not people using the neutral that bothers me, it’s the fact that the neutral is both singular and plural while the non neutrals are only singular/plural.
and the plural part also alters the entire sentence structure to plural.
“He is over there” - Singular and easy to understand
“They is over there” - Just sounds wrong.
“They are over there” - Both singular and plural. Is it a person of unspecified nature or multiple people of mixed ones?
English could use a popularization of a strictly singular neutral that doesn’t carry implications of being an object rather than a being (“It is over there”)
This argument has never made sense simply because of the fact that singular they/them has been in use for literally centuries. It's even reasonable to say it's always been in use considering singular they/them was in use in the 14th century and modern English formed around 14-17th. I can guarantee you have never batted an eye when you heard something like "someone called but they didn't leave a message".
There are only two differences with recent usage: people are less likely to assume genders so use they/them more freely; and people identifying specifically as they/them. The words themselves haven't really changed, they're just more common now. Opposition to singular they/them is almost entirely political.
Even if has been in use since forever, a more appropriate word can be introduced now.
That sounds like a solution that should make everyone happy. However, the crowd arguing against more pronouns would also argue against this, just because they're impossible to appease.
Wouldn't be surprised if the (mostly) political right that seems all these new pronouns as stupid would also ironically be against giving up on their own gender specific pronoun for a gender neutral one.